The Unmarked Mate

Rogues and Ashes

Quintin POV

What is that? It isn't a smell. It is almost like a feeling. A feeling of relief. A feeling of pleasure. I don't understand. How random? Why would it happen now? There is no one in this field. Our teams have triple checked the area. There is nothing anywhere.

All we found was a smoldering house, smoke, a ton of footprints converging on the house and a mess of footprints outside the house. We were able to follow them to an extraction point at the lake but after that nothing.

There was clearly a struggle but there was nothing here now. Just a ruined house. Whoever was here is now gone. We must have missed them by an hour or so.

And whoever was here did not want us or anyone knowing what or who was in that house. My teams found no remnants for anyone existing in this area. All the tracks and the marks on the land were covered if they were here very long at all.

I supposed there could be other covers. We did see some stuff that may imply that witches were involved in the house. Some of the smashed herbs and potion equipment either screamed witch or scientist or both. Either way no one is here.

I just linked Father to tell him the outcome. He wasn't happy. Odd. I would have figured it wouldn't have mattered much. He told me it was an old wolf family who lived here and sent out a distress call early morning. He told me the general area. The smoke did the rest.

We split and circled. We came up empty. Ty said he found some singular tracks. But they ended twenty yards outside the clearing. And no one is here. There are no more tracks after that.

It is odd. The tracks don't match the other patterns. And they strangely disappeared twenty feet back out and then nothing. Was the person picked up somehow? Odd there is nothing indicating a struggle. Just vanished.

I am sure it's witches of some kind. But the damage of the house reeks of wolf. I could still smell it after the burn. Rogues. They tried to cover it up but I could still smell faint tints of it even in their human form.

It was odd that they didn't shift though. They would be weaker and more vulnerable in that form.

Maybe Dad will know. I kept the warriors from shifting as we hunted the scene. I didn't want anyone vulnerable unnecessarily.

But what is this feeling? And why did it hit me all of a sudden?

This has happened once before nearly three years ago. In the clearing by the ridge, someone was there. We found their camp when on patrol. There were clearly cloaked. Their camp had no smell. We followed the tracks to the clearing. Because of the brush, it was clear they had one entry point. There was no exit. We all assumed it was witches passing through cloaked but one entry was strange. We all assumed they double backed while we were there somehow.

I honestly chalked the feeling up to being excited. It was my first patrol where we found anything of note.

There is nothing here. I am going to move on back to the pack house to report back to my Dad. There is nothing else out here we can do.

"Dad, we are headed back. There is no one here but a lot of footprints and a burning house. It is clear the extraction point was the lake. But something doesn't seem right."

Dad answered via link, with a tentative unease to his voice. "What do you mean? What did you find?"

"There were tons of human tracks but the smell was of rogues. It was clear work of wolves. You can tell by the wreckage: the broken branches, the way the tracks are. And it is clear a witch was living here. There is herbs and equipment that looks like some sort of "lab" maybe. But something is strange. Why wouldn't the rogues shift to their wolves? They would be vulnerable in their human form. And there is another thing that just doesn't make sense..." I trailed off in thought.

Dad asked quizzically, "What doesn't make sense?"

My Dad has always been the best strategist that I know. He has always let me figure things out myself. He was great that way. He was great at guiding me to the answer. That's why he was such a great Alpha. "There was one set of tracks that led into this mess from a different direction entirely. They came on foot from miles out. A party is still scouting the location. They were alone the whole time. Then the set just stopped out of nowhere...maybe twenty feet from where we are...just vanished. It was like they were extracted from that point but it doesn't make sense because there are no other prints."

My Dad cut off my ramblings in a very authoritative voice, not quite his Alpha voice but close. "Bring everyone back to the pack house. We will strategize from here. I will link border patrol to let them know you are coming back. Do not break ranks. Stay together. Someone is still there."

Candace POV

The black wolf stood for a long time. Lost in thought or looking around maybe.

All of sudden he turned and looked in the direction I came from.

About five minutes later, a brown wolf and three more wolves came from the direction. He must have called them back.

Were they following my tracks? Did they know I was here? Damn it, Mom would be pissed that I wasn't more careful. They taught me better than this. I could hear her words like she was saying them to be: "Safety first". Cam and I would mock her behind her back all the time about her catch phrase. We always taught it was too much but see this today...Maybe it wasn't.

After a brief moment of the new four wolves, all the wolves huddled up and follow the black wolf out of the clearing towards the ridge and the town.

I did move for what it felt like hours. I didn't know if they were coming back. I was terrified to move. If I am being honest, I was terrified to go. Where was my family? Why had no one made themselves known?

I hadn't heard any bird calls. Each of us had our own: a raven for Mom (that was her given name so it made sense), a nuthatch for Dad (he is a nut), a robin for Cam (the red in his hair) and a chickadee for me (they have too much energy).

I finally got the nerve to do my call when the sun hit past its highpoint. I waited. No response. I called again. Nothing.

After an hour, the fire was all but gone out. The smoke was barely visible and all I could hit was the occasional crackle. I finally got the nerve to see what the damage was.

It was horrible. The house was crumbling down to nothing. You could see the occasional odd trinket. Mom's herbal kit, half of Dad's book ash worn not legible, Cam's ball scorched, my childhood doll ashened with burnt hair. The fire looked like it had an accelerant of some kind. It must have hit my parents office and caused the bulk of the explosion. My mom's herbs could do that. The wrong combo and poff there goes your eyebrows.

I don't quite know what my parents were doing all the time in there but I knew some of it had to do with keeping us safe and protecting us, some had to do with what Cam and I could do and the rest was mystery. My parents never talked about it. We stopped asking after awhile. We got tired of the same answer. "We are assigned a specific job... It's top secret...We are protecting the family...There is just so much we can tell you till you are older." How old I still don't know. They never told us.

It was kind of strange to be honest. Our parents were normally so open with things and promoted our curiosities. They were science nerds too. The numbers of books in our household on different topics was astounding. We could read as much as we wanted. And they loved when we would ask questions and even better do experiments to see how things worked. A lot of our forest skills and potions came from this.

We also had a lot of physical activities. My Dad should have been Beta of our pack but had to step down to take care of us. So we had regular drills and activities just like training days he said. It also helped with my wiggles.

Our parents were very open and engaged with us.

So it was very strange and not typical that they would shut us out so hard when asking them about their work.

When we were young, there was a specific set of questions, tests and games we had to play every so often with them. When we were kids, we just thought it was a game. As we go older, we realized they were experiments of a different kind.

We were always told we were special in ways we did not know yet. "Right Mom, every parent believes their kids are "special"".

The house was a wreck though. The entire library was in the middle of it all. Our rooms no longer existed. They were on the second floor which someone on top of the library at this point. The southwest side of the house looked like the inside has managed to at least resemble the kitchen and dining room it used to be. For instance I could tell where the sink was but I doubted anything was functional with a thirty foot cross beam laying through it.

I called again. No response.

Our visibility cloaks worked as pairs. So if you wore the same blend from the same batch, you could see each other. While Mom kept all the hidden ones the same batch for that reason, there was always a chance someone used a different one found somewhere else. So bird calls to be safe.

I still heard nothing in response. There was no response.

They were gone. And I don't know what to do. There was no plan for this: I am on my own.